Coping with Life Under a Cloud of Medical Uncertainty

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“If we don’t know the answer to a question, it’s better to just say, ‘We don’t know.’ And then, of course, investigate and try to find an answer. We shouldn’t jump in with an uninformed answer based on our cognitive biases. And we definitely shouldn’t assume that, because we don’t know the answer to a question, the answer is therefore God, or something else supernatural.”

Skeptics and atheists say this stuff a lot. It’s all very well and good: I totally agree. But what do you do if the question on the table is one you really need an answer to? What if the question isn’t something fairly abstract or distant, like, “Why is there something instead of nothing”? What if the question is one with an immediate, practical, non-trivial impact on your everyday life? Something like… oh, say, just for a random example, “What are my chances of getting cancer, and what should I do to prevent it and detect it early?”

Here’s what I mean.

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Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, Coping with Life Under a Cloud of Medical Uncertainty. Go find out more about having a “presumptive” diagnosis of a genetic syndrome that increases your odds of getting cancer; the difficulties of living with medical uncertainty; how this difficulty contributes to people’s frustration with science; and why we should embrace science anyway… read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

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Coping with Life Under a Cloud of Medical Uncertainty
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